Engulfed
by angerwasallihad
Summary: Episode tag for "Jailbait," 2x13. Sharon's conversation with Rusty brings back painful memories. Mostly Sharon angst with a little fluff thrown in at the end.


**AN: This came from a combination of boredom without internet the other night, a conversation with an old high school friend of mine, and a general fascination with Sharon and her relationships. I haven't written anything in quite some time, so I'm a little self-conscious, but please read and review! Be warned: There is some material in here that may be a little rough on the feels. But if you stick with me through all the angst, there is a fluffy reward at the end!**

Sharon stood with her back against the closed bedroom door, lost in thought. Pulling her sweater more tightly around her body, cradling herself, she closed her eyes in an attempt to avoid the onslaught of emotions. She had known from the moment she entered that conversation that she risked re-opening these wounds. But she had done it anyway, because Rusty needed it.

"_Have you ever been to therapy?" It didn't surprise her that this was where the conversation was headed. _

"_Oh. Well yeah, yes." She nodded as she leaned over the back of the chair, deciding in that split second exactly how much to reveal. "About a month and a half after I graduated from the Academy, I went out on patrol," she continued matter-of-factly. Rusty's barely contained look of surprise didn't escape her notice. Was it surprise at the idea that she had sought psychiatric help, or that she was sharing at all? The latter, she decided. She had been trying to be more open with him lately, but perhaps she needed to try harder. Old habits. "And I shot a young man who was trying to kill his mother." She kept her voice even and factual, trying to keep the terror and inner turmoil she had felt that night so long ago out of her voice. Rusty didn't need to hear about how awful that night had been. He had plenty of his own horror to deal with. What he needed, Sharon reminded herself, was hope and proof that talking about the horror could help. "And when you do shoot someone, you have to be evaluated by a psychologist." She moved around the table to sit down with her tea. "At first, like you, I thought it was a waste of time. But later—" Sharon stopped, not ready to tell the whole story quite yet. Rusty did not need to hear about that, she decided. This was about him. He had enough to worry about. _

"_Later?" Rusty asked, looking expectant. _

"_It turned out to be useful." She spoke carefully. "There is a difference, you know, between being mentally ill and… emotionally injured." She stopped again. She knew she had to be careful, not only for her own emotional injuries, but for Rusty's as well. He spooked so easily when it came to emotionally charged conversations like this one._

"_I don't feel injured," Rusty said. _

_Sharon could feel him teetering on the edge of that irrational teenage anger again, so she continued. "No. Neither did I. But then I had to keep reliving the experience, in depositions, and in pre-trial hearings, and in court, because the justice system—it puts extraordinary pressure on witnesses." She watched his face carefully now, as she consciously turned the conversation toward Rusty's predicament. "And it's so unfair. Because the victim, and the witnesses, and the officers have to relive the crime again and again until they tell their story in open court. And even then, you may not be done. Because the trauma of being a witness can revisit you again and again, long after you thought it was over." As she spoke, she felt the truth of her words acutely and reminded herself that they were _not _going to talk about _that._ "And when one is subjected to that kind of pain," Sharon was no longer looking at him, feeling herself getting pulled into a painful memory. "Sometimes a doctor can help." She pulled herself back into the present moment, looking back at Rusty and smiling slightly. She was a little relieved when her phone began to ring. "But you're not in therapy. You're just being evaluated." She smiled more broadly as she got up to find her phone, attempting to lighten the mood for both their sakes. _

Standing alone in the dark now, Sharon felt the memories she had been avoiding in front of Rusty come rushing back. Not of that first shooting she had spoken about. It really hadn't been that traumatic, and she rarely thought about that troubled young man or his mother. But she had been truthful to Rusty. The tools the doctor had given her at that time helped her, later. When her trauma was not confined to her work, but entered her home in the evenings, wreaking of alcohol and smoke.

It's been twenty years, but just as she'd said to Rusty, her pain revisited her again and again. Far more often than she'd care to admit. It was no longer crippling, as it had been in the early days before she'd swallowed her pride and asked for help. But it still stole into her bedroom some nights and stole her sleep and sense of well-being. Not so much now that she had Rusty to worry about. Yet another reason she could never give him up. He kept her grounded and focussed.

Sharon sank down to the floor, her back still against the closed door, with her knees clutched to her chest. She couldn't fight the memories anymore, so she bowed her head over her knees and let them engulf her.

_She woke, suddenly and without warning. Something was moving downstairs, quite noisily and clumsily. She looked over at her alarm clock. 3:00 in the morning. The place in the bed beside her was cold and empty. Again. Not that she was surprised. A moment later she heard another thump, punctuated by a muffled swear word and quite a loud crash. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed, praying the noise wouldn__'__t wake her children. _

_After abandoning her with both kids and no car at their celebratory dinner last night, it seemed that Jack had gone out and gotten himself well and truly sloshed. She walked out of the bedroom, continuing down the hall towards the stairs. If he had returned home at three am, drunk out of his mind, only to wake Ricky and Katie__… __She would live up to the name he had thrown across the dinner table at her last night before his dramatic exit. _

_At the bottom of the stairs, she saw a light on in the kitchen. Stepping carefully over the shards of a broken ceramic vase in the hall, she walked into the kitchen. The smell hit her first; a revolting mix of alcohol, cigarette smoke, and vomit. Squinting in the bright light of the room, Sharon saw him. He was hunched over the sink, a terrible retching sound coming from his mouth as he heaved, Sharon__'__s beautiful orderly kitchen counters reduced to utter chaos all around him. _

"_Jack.__" __She spoke quietly, the way she always did when she found him this way. It broke her heart to see the man she loved, the father of her beautiful children, reduced to this louse of a man that he had become. _

"_Sharn,__" __he slurred, looking up at her leaning on the doorjamb. He shot her what she supposed was meant to be a charming smile. In reality, it was more like a leer, and didn__'__t help matters in the slightest. He turned quickly back to the sink with a retching sound, accompanied by the sickening noise of his vomit landing in the sink. _

"_I__'__m sorry, Sharn,__" __Jack mumbled drunkenly. __"__I shouldna called you a frigid bitch.__" __He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, turning back towards her. __"__It__'__s not right for me to talk like that in front of the kids.__" __He took a deep breath. It seemed the retching had stopped for the moment. He stood before her, still unsteady. _

_Sharon stared at him. There was a time when that sort of dispassionate comment would have ignited another argument. Now it just made her sad. She moved toward him. __"__Jack, you__'__re out of control. You__'__re in no state to discuss it right now, but when you__'__ve sobered up, we__'__re going to talk about how you might find it in yourself treat me with the respect that I have shown you.__" __She turned back into the hall, towards the linen closet. __"__Until then,__" __she called back to Jack, still standing unsteadily in the kitchen, __"__you can sleep on the couch.__" __She opened the closet door and pulled down some extra bedding and a pillow. She turned around, closing the door, and found Jack__'__s face nearly nose-to-nose with her own, his smell overwhelming her. She immediately stepped back with a gasp, dropping the pillow and bedding in her surprise and knocking her lower back hard against the doorknob of the closet behind her. _

_Jack__'__s face was no longer sad or pitiful. It was red, twisted now into a look of rage. __"__You want to talk about respect?!__" __He was yelling now, completely out of control. He grabbed her left arm in a vice-like grip, pushing her back, hard, at an angle against the closet door and the table just to the right of it, trapping her there. __"__You don__'__t know the meaning of the word, sergeant.__" __He exaggerated her new title, spitting it in her face. __"__You spend your days as the Ice Queen, treating good cops like criminals, you spend your nights playing Mommy and turning my own children against me, and then you come here and you give me this superior bullshit about RESPECT?!__" __His left hand came around to her other arm while he was speaking, and he shook her on the last word. _

_Sharon was paralyzed. She couldn__'__t believe this was happening. Her husband, the man who had once made her feel beautiful with a single glance, had been transformed into this terrifying man before her. This sort of thing happened to other women. The women she saw when she was on patrol, telltale bruises on their arms and faces, assuring her that it was their fault, that he didn__'__t mean it, and that Sharon really didn__'__t need to file a report. This didn__'__t happen to her. _

"_Jack,__" __she breathed quietly, looking up at the ceiling pointedly and then calmly into his face. __"__You need to calm down. You__'__re going to wake Ricky and Katie.__" __She brought her right hand tentatively up to his, still tightly clutching her left upper arm. It happened so fast, she barely registered what was happening. In a moment, he had spun her around, surprisingly steady on his feet, and pushed her up against the wall on the opposite side of the hall, knocking the wind out of her. _

_Still shocked by the sudden violent turn this evening had taken, Sharon gasped for breath, and then looked up into Jack__'__s face. And then she saw it. Jack wasn__'__t her husband anymore. By some bizarre turn of events, he had been replaced by this hateful, angry, violent man now standing before her. And she saw only one way out. She quickly raised her left foot, simultaneously wrenching her right arm out of Jack__'__s grip. She brought her foot down on his right, bringing her right elbow forcefully into his face. He swayed drunkenly on the spot, and then crumpled to the floor, looking up at her in surprise. _

_Sharon crouched down next to him, speaking quietly and calmly. __"__You are no longer welcome in this house. You are going to walk out that door and not come back until you are sober and no longer a danger to me or this family. I reserve the right to turn you away at any time. This is not your home.__" __Her tone turned icy. __"__Now get out of my sight.__" __She stood up and pointed at the door, making it clear that she meant business. _

_Slowly, miraculously, Jack rose from the floor and walked out the door without another word. Sharon closed the door quietly behind him and locked it. She leaned against the door for a moment, and then she cried. _

Sharon lifted her head as the memory passed, staring into space. She hadn't thought of that night in a long time. It was one of the reasons she was so thankful for this new job and Rusty's constant presence in her life. Her mind was too full of the present crises to dwell on the past too much. Jack never let on that he remembered that night at all, and the man who had appeared that night had never resurfaced in her presence. She never would have let Jack near Rusty or her other children again otherwise. And she had always said that Jack just left. Yes, she had kicked him out, and while he didn't remember much, he got the gist when she changed the locks. But really, the man she loved had left her long before that night.

Jack's face had eventually healed—she had broken his nose and blackened both his eyes with that well-placed elbow—though he still insisted he had sucker-punched by some guy in a bar. He now told the story with such relish now that Sharon was convinced he didn't remember that night at all and had come up with a good story to fill in the blanks. He himself probably believed it now.

But Sharon would never be truly healed. The minor bruises on her back and arms had faded in time, but like she had said to Rusty, her pain revisited her again and again. Not so much now, though. She had gotten the help she needed. But it was still there, in the way she closed herself off from the people around her. She thought again of that look of surprise on Rusty's face during their earlier conversation. She needed to do better. He needed to understand that emotion was not a weakness, but a strength. She would do better.

Suddenly there was a soft knock on the door above her head. She jumped, scrambling to her feet, swiftly wiping any trace of her recent thoughts from her face with the back of her hand and slipping her glasses back on her nose. She slowly opened the door. "Rusty?" He stood in the hall, looking rather sheepish.

"Umm. I know it's late, but can we, you know, talk for a minute?" His hands twisted nervously in front of him.

"Of course. Come in, Rusty." She opened the door wider and stepped aside so he could come in. He rarely came into her bedroom; she tried to give him his space and he had reciprocated. Now he looked rather unsure of what to do. She closed the door and walked over to the still made bed, switching on a lamp as she went. "Have a seat." She patted the space next to her on the bed, and he sat, pulling his feet up between them and crossing his legs so he faced her.

"I just… Well I wanted to say that I think maybe you're right about me being emotionally injured." Sharon thought he still looked rather nervous, and seemed to be picking his words very carefully. "I appreciate that you're not asking me to talk about it with you. Cause Sharon, there's some bad stuff, and well—" She stopped him with her hand hovering in the air between them, almost touching him, but not quite.

"Rusty, you know that all I ask of you is to be kind and to be safe." She looked at him closely, making sure he could see that this was important. "As long as you are doing those two things, then you don't have to talk to me about anything that you don't want to." She smiled, bringing her hand back down into her lap.

Rusty looked back at her. "Okay," he said, shifting a little in his seat. "But I guess what I'm trying to say is that I fought you pretty hard on this whole shrink thing." Sharon watched him. He was still speaking slowly and carefully, as if it was very important for him to get this right. "But you're right; there is a difference between being crazy and being, what did you call it? Emotionally injured. And I think maybe I could use the help."

Sharon waited, to make sure Rusty was finished. "Well I think that's good." She looked over at him, gauging his mood. "I have an idea," she said, starting to stand up. "I'm not going to be able to sleep much tonight, and I don't know about you, but I could go for a movie. What do you say we just veg out in front of the TV all night?" He jumped up from his place on the bed.

"Really? What do you want to watch?" He was already moving back into the living room, excited at the prospect.

She smiled, following him into the other room and sitting on the couch. "You pick something out. I have a feeling you're not really up for _Les Destin__é__es _tonight. Just please, no spaceships, okay?" He was already sprawled on the floor in front of the TV, looking through her DVDs.

Finally, he settled on one. "How about this?" He asked, holding up Ricky's old copy of _The Fellowship of the Ring_. "There aren't any spaceships, I promise."

"Fine," she said. "If that's what you really want, let's get started." She really didn't mind. Just so long as it left no room for the memories on her mind tonight.

They fell asleep on the couch halfway through the movie. She slept soundly, with Rusty's feet on her lap and a blanket covering the two of them.


End file.
